It was a really busy month for us in February- probably one of the more stressful months that I’ve had in a while. This was mostly due to the Big Chill gymnastics meet our gym hosted. I was a meet director this year for The Big Chill which involved spending 20-30 hours per week in January in preparation and over 46 hours during a four day period this month while the meet took place.

Some other highlights of the month included: a Valentine’s Day sleepover, performing a Yoruba naming ceremony, baking bread, a new swim club for Alexa, attending a DuSable Museum of African American History dance performance, dim sum in Chinatown, and three birthday parties.

The Odyssey – This is quite a long graphic novel- close to 200 pages- but it faithfully describes The Odyssey. Just as a warning, there is partial nudity in some of the panels.

Alexa’s Reading List

Alexa has been tearing through the Erin Hunter Warrior Cats and Survivor series. Give her book with an animal in it and she’s good to go! She also just started the Mysterious Benedict Society after seeing it on my bookshelf.

The kids wrote a short play together for their Awana club about Joshua and the battle of Jericho.

WCRP.forums.com Alexa spends several hours a day on this site. It’s a role playing game based on the Warrior Cats series. A leader starts a clan and has to write up the entire back story of the clan, write the prologue to the series, and is responsible for recruiting people on the site to participate in the clan’s storyline and answer questions and comments.

After a few weeks, Alexa decided to start her own clan. She worked with another player to create a banner for her page on the site. She has written dozens of pages worth of story for the clan she made up. Basically she writes part of a story and then the other people in her clan continue writing the story. Each clan member adds to the story when the other clan members are done writing their sections. Alexa really is a great writer- extremely detailed and descriptive for her age. I’m very proud of her!

Kids made us a pre Valentine’s Day dinner: The kids wanted to do something special for Steve and I for Valentine’s Day, so they made us a pre- Valentine’s Day dinner all by themselves. The menu: orange, raspberry, and Triscuit pizza appetizer, pita pizza entree, and a dessert of white and milk chocolate drizzled over caramel corn.

Valentine’s Day Scavenger Hunt – Jared wanted to do something special for us for Valentines’s Day, so he made up a bag filed with his own candy and hid it somewhere near the house. Then he hid clues all over the house that we had to use to find out where the candy was hidden. So sweet!

Rode bikes next to Steve while he ran with Jessy

Tossed the frisbee around in the backyard with Steve

Jared has started to regularly practice gymnastics at home, too, for about two and a half hours per week on top of his regular 11 hours at the gym. Steve built a short parallel bars set for him using PVC pipe.

Alexa loves to color on her own. She usually prints up pictures she likes on Google images. She has been studying shading techniques and has become quite good! She also has been practicing realistic drawing.

Out of the House Activities

Weekly: Jared 11 hours of gymnastics practice

Alexa started 2 hours per week of a new swimming club this month to prepare for trying out for competitive swimming team in the fall.

Big Chill gymnastics meet: I worked as director this year. It was A LOT of work!!! During the month of January I put in around 20-30 hours each week and then 46 plus hours during the four days the meet took place. It was a very intense 5 weeks to say the least! Jared had his best meet of the year with 1st place all around.

LOTS of birthday parties this month!!! Uncle Andrew birthday party, Uncle Joe’s birthday party and Grandad’s birthday party. So nice to spend time with family this month We also went out to lunch after church one day with Steve’s aunt who was in town from Missouri.

We went to the DuSable Museum of African American History for a Celebration of Dances from West African performance. It was REALLY good! They called kids up to the stage to learn a dance and perform it, so Jared was able to go on stage which he of course loved. Afterwards, we went through the museum and saw exhibits on African-American quilts and African-Americans in war.

After the DuSable Museum we had a dim Sum Lunch with friends in China town at MingHin. It was DELICIOUS! I have to get here sometime with Steve. We also stopped at a Chinese bakery on the way back to the car.

Playdate at a friends’s house. My sister and her boys were able to come, too.

Well, according to my last blog post, I haven’t posted a living and learning wrap since August 2014- for almost two and a half years! Before that I had posted what we did each month since November 2011. Part of me feels guilty; part of me feels regret. But another part of me pats myself [...]

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I’m almost done catching you up on all that we’ve been up to these past few months. Yea! Next week I’ll actually have June’s Learning Log posted on time Most of May we weren’t even home, so the rest of this learning log won’t be as long as previous months. As I posted last week [...]

Welcome!

Hi! I'm so happy to have you here. My name is Christina Pilkington. Those are my two wondeful children in the picture above (they're twins!). We daily live a life of passion, adventure and connections.

Our philosophy of learning is to dive into life and take in all that interests and amazes us, on our own time and in our own way. We're particularly interested in travel, community-based learning, and exploring the world.